Page 68 of Revenge At Raleigh High
So, so cold.
Something smells…wrong.
Groaning, I try to crack my eyes open, but a jolt of pain lashes through my head, startling and terrible enough to make me whimper. I sink back down onto the freezing cold floor beneath me.
Where the hell am I?
What…what the hell happened?
It comes back in flashes—brutal snapshots, so violent that I curl myself up into a ball, shrinking from the assault of memories. Jake, in my father’s bedroom, standing over me as I cowered in the closet. A cruel, satisfied smirk on Jake’s face. His hands on me, ripping and dragging me out from my hiding place.
Pain.
Fear.
Screaming.
Pleading.
Laughter.
Anger.
Hate.
Hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate….
In my head, Jake picks me up and hurls me into the mirror hanging on my father’s wall. I recoil away from the echo that rattles my bones. I almost bit straight through my lip when my shoulder hit the glass. I can still taste the blood.
“Looks like you and the Moretti freak are the real deal, huh?” The voice sends a thrill of terror up my spine. He’s here with me—though I don’t know wherehereis—and more than that. He’s close. The sound of his shallow, even breathing pierces my whirring thoughts, reminding me of the all too real, very present danger at hand.
I don’t want to, it hurts to even contemplate, but I need to open my eyes. I have to see…
Explosions of color twist and dance across my vision as I peer into the darkness. My pulse beats against the insides of my ears like a frantic war drum. And then there he is, sitting on a bench in front of a wall of lockers, his face cast into blue highlight and shadow as he stares down at the screen of a phone.
“I thought I knew everything there was to know about Alessandro Moretti, but looks like I was wrong. Turns out the guy’s covered in all that ink and puts on a good show when he feels the need, but underneath the bravado and the stone-cold façade,”—Jake lowers the phone, looking me dead in the eye—“he’s basically just a fucking pussy.”
I don’t respond. I can’t. My jaw feels like it will shatter if I try to open my mouth. Jake hums quietly, turning his attention back to the phone in his hands.Mycell phone. “You’re the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. I was a broken shell before I met you. I can’t picture my lifewithout you,Argento. I could lose everything and still feel like the luckiest bastard alive if I still had—” He cuts off, rolling his eyes. “I mean, the guy’s a fucking dickless punk. What kind of loser says this stuff? I’m struggling to understand what the hell you see in him. He’s already had you on your back. That’s obvious. So why the fuck is he spouting all of this sappy bullshit?”
I swallow, wincing at the raw pain that burns in my throat. I screamed myself hoarse back at the house; it feels as though I’ve been eating glass.
“Moretti’s got a lot to learn. Girls never respect a guy if they wear their bleeding hearts on their sleeves.” Slowly, he gets to his feet, grunting. I force myself to move, shoving myself away from him, even though every bone and muscle in my body protests at the effort. It’s all for naught, anyway. My back hits a wall behind me. There’s nowhere for me to go. Jake smiles wickedly as he steps toward me. Crouching down, he purrs to himself as he strokes a sticky strand of hair back out of my face. “You…you’re not most girls, though, are you, Silver? You’re damaged goods. You’ll cling to even the weakest man if you think he’ll keep you afloat. God,” he says, shaking his head. “I mean, look at you. You’re a fucking mess. Face all busted up. Blood everywhere. I hate to tell you this, but I doubt even a guy as desperate for affection as Alex Moretti is gonna be interested by the time I’m through with you. I hope you got some rest, Silver. Tonight’s gonna be a long night.”
The whisper that I push past my lips sounds pathetic. “You can…hurt and…bruise me all…you like, Jake. But you…you won’tbreakme.”
Jake’s smirk sours. He lets his hand fall away from my face. “I already broke you. I broke you in that bathroom, when I shoved my dick inside you. You’ve tried to fight it, but you knew it was a losing battle, didn’t you? I saw you in that basement at the Rock. I watched you. I saw your need to hurt when he fucked you. You looked like you were trying to tear each other apart. The truth is that you see me standing over you whenever he’s inside you. You want the pain. You want the humiliation. You want to be degraded, hit and kicked and spit on. It’s all you know now. It breeds inside you like a plague.”
I shrink from the words. They’re not true. At least not all of them. When I’m with Alex, he is all I ever see. But the violence I’ve tried to instigate, when we should have been trading nothing but a gentle touch… “You’resick,” I whisper. I don’t know if I’m referring to him, or to me.
His eyes shine brightly in the dark, brimming with amusement. “Maybe. That doesn’t make me wrong, now, does it?”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Of course I do. I showed you the only real love you’ve ever known in that bathroom.”
“That wasn’t love. That washate.”
Unfazed, Jake sits back on his heels, shrugging. “Hate. Love. They amount to the same thing. They’re built on the same foundations, aren’t they? Both are seeds planted in our hearts. You can try to feed only one of them, but it doesn’t make any difference. One will flourish right alongside the other. Doesn’t matter which you bring to the light and which you keep hidden in the dark.”
